/ TerraByte / public to the public / gardenparty / demolition party / daily paper / up/down the toilet / chairpants / useless umbrella / creek / what-you-see-is-what-you-get / hoses / tree cult / resized living / riget / cubicles digest / flux / andorra / intimacy / still available / studio extension / serpent house
The essay “New Babylon, a nomadic town” from 1974 Constant Nieuwenhuys describes a world without frontiers, a world of freedom. It is described as a city of the future that spans the globe as a network 20 meters above ground.
All land would be shared, all work would be done by machines, and all people are free to define and experience themselves through creative games. The studio “Babylon 3 - reconstruction of the future” is based on the ideas of Constants drawings, descriptions and models and elaborated from the perspective of an architect or engineer in training, rather than from a visionary. It is a reconstruction of an excerpt of the city network and presents itself as a framework of a future city and society. The free society of Babylon 3 is not bound to private possessions or personal belongings. Games rule the everyday life, a place where the Babylonians experience themselves. This is a collective society which does not differentiate between public and private situations. Concepts of privacy, intimacy, sensuality and sexuality are redefined through architectural interventions. On different levels of the structure, the Babylonian has to prove his own perception and interpretation of intimacy. The project seeks to investigate an experimental setup of a ludic society, where repressive notions of sexuality and play are questioned and liberated.
